Melanie in the Middle
When people ask, I tell them I was the middle child. When they find out my mother was only pregnant once, because once is plenty when you have identical triplets, they grin or laugh.
It’s not funny. Not even before you discover what happened to my sisters, news that freezes faces, stills mirth, turns a bright day dark.
In every family photo, from the first until the last, from gurning nappies through pig-tails to awkward teenagers, I’m the girl in the middle. Always. In everything. In the back seat of a series of ever-expanding cars, in sports, never first, never last; in academic success, in luck, in love, in life. I’m in the middle, sandwiched between two extremes. I was born seven and a half minutes after Olivia, and thirteen minutes before Trinity. We were all underweight of course, months early, but Olivia was two ounces heavier, and Trinity, five ounces lighter. Not that you’d know, by the time we celebrated our first birthday. In appearances we were too close for most to tell apart.
But I know what I know. I can point myself out, in any group picture. Melanie, in the middle.
Everyone knew that Olivia and Trinity would make their respective splashes. One destined for greatness, the other, infamy. As for me? Not so much. A footnote. The “other” triplet. At school, I was the balance between star pupil, and constant disruption. Between order and chaos, good and bad, hard-working and under-achieving. Melanie Mediocre. At home, I was the yardstick my parents used to decide if my sisters’ behaviour was acceptable, or not.
Which, by perverse logic, meant that I was never rewarded, never punished.
Every year, on our birthday, and on that other anniversary, I stand between their adjacent headstones, blaming myself. Blaming them in my next breath, blaming parents and a world that never properly learned to tell us apart in my third. Wondering, as I must, if they’re even in the right graves.
Because while everything I’ve told you is true, I haven’t told you it all. Yes, in every photo, I’m the girl in the middle. But you’ve probably assumed something; that it was always Trinity on my left, and Olivia on my right. Always Olivia who scored the highest, and Trinity who was in trouble. And the records, school and otherwise, they would back you up. But reality wouldn’t.
Because “Olivia” was the triplet who was brilliant, and good, and kind, and “Trinity” was the triplet who messed up, who took delight in crashing out, who was spiteful, and clumsy.
Are we who we claim to be, or what we do? If Trinity claimed to be Olivia, to escape detention or a stint on the naughty step, no-one believed her. It was too obvious a deception. Because “Olivia” would never do what she had just done.
With that hard grained, etched in stone, it didn’t actually matter which triplet scored the top marks, or which was stuck writing lines. All the credit went one way, the debit, the other. The difference exaggerated, accentuated. Me, the wedge between.
In those photos, looking back, I can’t remember, and now I can’t tell, which sister is which. They swapped places on an almost daily, sometimes hourly basis. The few clues--favourite bracelets, different coloured hair grips, their position either side of me--covertly exchanged along with their names. Even at the time I struggled to keep track.
It all came to a head the summer before we were due to go to university. I had a solid offer for a practical, unexciting degree from a mid-rank uni, ridiculously glad, if quiet about it, that I would finally be out from under their combined shadows. But Trinity and Olivia wanted to prolong their game, continue living their double, double lives, and go to the same city, even the same halls.
Problem was, “Trinity” didn’t get the grades.
You might think that obvious, that she was never going to. But she got closer than anyone expected. I wonder who sat which papers, how carefully they tried to divide the honours between them. But, whether by luck, or by lingering reputation, Olivia squeaked in, and Trinity fell just short.
In the final weeks before we were forced to go our different ways, an almighty battle broke out. Who would get to be “Olivia”, and who “Trinity”? Who would go on to glory, and who would have a whale of a time but probably get expelled before the first term was out?
At the inquest, I said they were distraught at being torn apart. But that, even then, they’d never intended to go through with it, on top of that windswept cliff overlooking a slate gray sea. I don’t tell them about the fierce arguments, the jostling, the insults howled into the wind. Or that I was called upon to back up one, and then the other, a barrage of wheedling and recriminations and threats that had me covering my ears.
Until I snapped. Until I screamed no more!
They stepped back, in surprise and alarm, that the mouse had roared. Stepped, and slipped, fingers tightly entwined. Who fell first? Who dragged the other after?
Does it matter?
I should have been between them, holding their hands. The steadfast rock, preventing the moment of madness. I could have, should have, jumped after them, done my best to catch up on the way down. Three triplets, dead at the bottom of a cliff. What a story that would have been! Easier, than what followed. The toxic guilt, the parents falling apart, my life on hold, possibly indefinitely.
You’re probably wondering one thing. Three identical babies, two exhausted parents, a thousand nappy changes and shared beds. How can anyone be so certain that I was the second-born child?
You can’t. We can’t. I can’t.
But still I know. It is at the very core of me.
I’m Melanie, in the middle.
Liam Hogan is an award-winning short story writer, with stories in Best of British Science Fiction and in Best of British Fantasy (NewCon Press). He volunteers at the creative writing charities Ministry of Stories, and Spark Young Writers. More details at http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk
